Jonathan Saunders / Pre-Fall 2013

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Jonathan Saunders has had a heck of a week. On Tuesday, he showed his growing-by-demand menswear collection in London in an acclaimed presentation. That night, Selfridges and Fantastic Man threw a dinner for him, and at the crack of dawn the next morning he was at Heathrow, bound for New York with his pre-fall women’s collection. Such is the blessing and the curse of every designer with a growing business to support these days.

So, what of pre-fall? It’s impressive to see a designer who started life straight out of Central Saint Martins hand-printing his collections reach a stage of professionalism where he’s so au fait with his customers’ needs on both sides of the Atlantic. He knows the shapes his grown-up women find easy—a lot of separates in the way of A-line skirts, knits, jackets, and sinuous evening dresses with a certain presence about them but also a fresh absence of fussiness. His talent as a colorist and manipulator of surface pattern is what makes these pieces speak to women from across a crowded department store, or pop from an e-commerce site. In this trans-seasonal season, it’s the slightly strange combinations of ocher, oxblood, and Yves Klein blue that hold interest—plus his vaguely mid-century-modern vertical-dash-and-dab prints and stylized florals. In other words, this isn’t one of those pre-collections a designer has used as a vehicle for experimenting with new ideas. It’s about wardrobe-building, continuity, and developing signatures. Which is fine for now.